It’s funny how people’s tastes are so unpredictable. Although not a great fan of fish, I do like English smoked haddock (which I don’t find fishy), even though my resident fish lover says that smoked haddock has one of the fishiest flavours of them all. But there’s no accounting for taste.

A standard item on London’s Savoy Hotel menu is Omelette Arnold Bennett, a delicious mixture of eggs, smoked haddock and Parmesan cheese. The story goes that while English novelist Arnold Bennett was staying at the hotel, the chefs perfected an omelette that he enjoyed so much, he insisted that it was prepared for him wherever he went thereafter.

Since then, it’s been made at the hotel every day. Omelette A.B. is nothing like a standard omelette made with just eggs and butter;it is altogether different as it incorporates both béchamel and hollandaise sauces.

The same ingredients (minus the hollandaise) also make a lovely creamy quiche. Smoked haddock is very elusive in Malta, but the other day I found the last boil-in-the-bag pack in the freezer at Scotts Supermarket. I don’t know whether it’s a regular item there, but as I don’t usually use ingredients that are hard to find in Malta, a mixture of fresh and smoked salmon substituted for the haddock is equally good. Cut into wedges and topped with a spoonful of crème fraîche, the tart makes a nice starter or, served with a salad, a light lunch or supper.

The recipe for Mediterranean tuna quiche came about through a turnout of my kitchen cupboards, when I came across a triple-pack of John West tuna in spring water that had been overlooked. I mixed a couple of tins with a few other store cupboard ingredients, olives, sun-dried tomatoes and pine nuts, turned them into a pastry case and poured over some beaten eggs and cream.

What I thought would be just an ordinary tart turned out to be something quite special and it made a very filling and satisfying supper. You can use any other brand of tuna, of course, it’s just that two 130g tins of John West with the rest of the ingredients were just the right size to fill a 23-centimetre tart tin.

I’m obviously not doing very well with my shopping at the moment. Not only did I forget I had those tins of tuna, but I bought lots of apples to make something, then changed my mind and made something completely different, so that’s the reason for the French apple flan. But as we like apple tarts, flans or pies, using them up was no problem.

I did actually buy the grapes to make the grape and lemon flan. The traditional (or cheffy) method for making pâte sucrée, or sweet shortcrust pastry, is to sift the flour on to a surface, make a well in the middle, add sugar, soft butter and egg yolks, then mix and pinch it together with the fingers of one hand. Well, I’ve tried that and got in a terrible sticky mess, so I’ve found a much simpler way of making it.

The pastry will keep in the fridge for up to three days if well wrapped, or in the freezer for at least a month, so it’s worth making double the quantity. The pastry is nice and biscuity, the tart is cool and delicious and, as it needs to be made in advance and chilled, it is just the thing for a summer lunch or dinner party.